


STARK SUCCEEDS

by foulrescent



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mental Anguish, Siberian Compound, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7493943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foulrescent/pseuds/foulrescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The strongest Captain and all of his might, couldn’t put Bucky together again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	STARK SUCCEEDS

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry. was going to write Team Cap hiding on a private island but then this happened. Maybe next time. 
> 
> All mistakes are my own. PLEASE be aware of brief suicidal thoughts and obviously major character death. Ending is hopeful. 
> 
> drink a hot chocolate with this one

Steve is down for what feels like a second. It might be more. Time has already been so cruel to him, so he has no sense of it. The years spent in the ice were a relief, but it ignored his grief and took much more from him. He could have had the life he spoke lowly about at night underneath the starry atmospheric blanket in Italy, but he knows it would have been rotten without the other half of his soul there. The 70 years was a bittersweet journey of absolute nothingness. It felt like a day.

The realisation of what’s happened claws at the very being in his chest. He heaves in a rusted breath and counters the attack. He grabs his shield and rams it into the iron. _It’s just an arm_ , he tells himself. _He tried to kill your friend_ , a voice taunts right back at him, _it’s an arm now, but next it’ll be a heart_.

He falls. He gets back up. He’s on top of Tony, slamming over and over. There’s nothing to think about. His brain is doing nothing put sending neurons to his muscles, telling them to move, move, move. To hit and slam and wedge the damn thing that the man who his friend killed made. 

His breath is heavy in a way it hasn’t been since he yelled Bucky’s name and rested his head on Peggy’s new grey hair for the first time. 

Tony’s down. The suit’s decapitated and stripped of power. Steve relieves Tony of his weight and comes to a stand. He stares at the man he thought came as a friend in disbelief. The disbelief regards both his actions and Tony’s. How could they betray each other like this? Why couldn’t they just talk? Steve turns away, thinking nothing but that Tony is irrational. And then his eyes travel through the cemented room and he finally takes in his injured friend. His other half that isn’t moving. 

Bucky is on his back, his once gleaming arm shredded into wires and sharp edges, and the wires still surprise Steve even though he knows how intricate the mechanics are and how deep the mechanics go. The vibranium plating on his spine. The man-made cord that sizzles on his brainstem. Bucky’s eyes are open, still blue as the first day he blinked at little Steve Rogers. His chest isn’t moving like it was back then, when he spat out blood, wiped his crimson knuckles on his nice shirt and gulped in air like it was rid of any properties his body would accept.

“Buck?” Steve says softly, like the childish name is a trigger for chaos. When Bucky doesn’t blink and stays there lying with the glazed, empty eyes of the Winter Soldier, he wishes death upon himself when he tries to get attention with, “ _Soldat_?”

Bucky doesn’t indicate compliance. He doesn’t do anything that indicates life. Steve doesn’t need to check for a pulse. He knows he knows he knows and he wish he didn’t. 

He turns back harshly to Tony, who’s no longer putting his iron hands up in fear, but is just staring back a little satisfied, a little frightened and just plainly confounded.

Steve throws his shield onto the hard, stony ground and the clank that sounds won't pierce Bucky's ears. Bucky will not hear anything ever again. He won’t feel anything. He won’t remember the older Stark brokenly calling him Sergeant Barnes, but then he won’t remember wiping charcoal off of Steve’s crooked nose. He won’t feel the guilt. He won’t feel sparks of amazement or shyness or happiness. He won’t feel like he’s not worth it, but he won’t feel like he is either.

The shield swirls to a stop and Tony glances at it as it does, almost like he’s controlling the circular movements. Something in Steve rumbles. He wishes that he actually had the courage to collide the shield between Tony’s mouth. The force would unhinge Tony’s jaw and split all the way through to the back of his skull. The odds aren’t in Steve’s favour. A loved one for a loved one. It’s already been fulfilled. It’s still unjustifiable.

Steve looks around for the arm. The cold sets an unease in his body. His stomach feels sick. His head aches. He scurries around like he’s looking for a misplaced newborn that needs to be tended for right away. He’s on the verge of hysteria. He can feel Tony’s sad eyes watching his movements. He’s surprised that Tony hasn’t said anything.

As soon as he finds the arm he doesn’t know why he let himself feel surprised, because Tony begins to form a word and that will turn into a sentence that will make Steve’s blood boil.

“Shut up shut up _shut up_!” Steve yells, spinning around on his heels. The arm is intact and heavy in his hand. It advances forward like Steve's going to let it go, chuck it at Tony's face. Tony flinches. Steve stumbles when he halts himself. “Don’t you dare fucking say he deserved this! I told you. I told you it wasn't him. I don’t need you to turn this into something that will amuse you. Ever since I – ever since… Maybe if I fix his arm he’ll wake up,” he meekly says, turns his back to Tony and falls onto his knees beside Bucky.

He fits the sharp edges against each other. He tries to fit them together like a puzzle piece. They don’t. Some pieces are missing. Plates and smooth surfaces and a point of the red star. _The strongest Captain and all of his might couldn’t put Bucky together again_.

“Why couldn’t you just run,” Steve seethes. He leans over Bucky with an elbow on each side of Bucky’s blank face. The blue eyes are staring right back at Steve’s, which a flawed with green. Steve blows out a whoosh of air, the man-made wind blowing a strand of dark, long hair back and even makes a few already dried flecks of blood become airborne. 

Bucky’s mouth is stained with red. There’s a trail of blood from his nostrils to the sides of his ears, running across his scruffy, pale cheeks. His lips are pouty. His mouth’s parted. Steve shifts his weight on his left arm and reaches out with his right. He brushes Bucky’s matted hair back. Tries to untangle the strands from the clotted blood. Some are sleek and wet and his hand gets tarnished with cherries. He touches Bucky’s still warm lips. He doesn’t dare push Bucky’s eyelids down.

“Cap…” Tony croaks out. He sounds defeated. Steve almost wants to make that tone permanent.

Steve shushes him, his bottom lip quivering. He leans back on his heels. He wraps a hand around the metal arm’s wrist. He raises the palm to his face, the elbow and half the shoulder dragging along his body. He uses both his hands to move apart the fingers and to fit the cold metal around his throat.

“This is your signature move, innit? Do it. Come on, Buck. Let me know. Give me something. Give me something. Fuck!” He cries, even though he knows the fingers won’t get tighter. He urges, “Come on, Bucky. Do it for me. Please please please. One more time won’t hurt. Bucky.”

“Cap,” the solution to all his problems gasps.

Even with the unstable state he’s in, he decides against it. It’ll be inappropriate to crawl over to Tony, grab Tony’s armored arm and presses the palm of it to his cheek, beg, _come on. You oughta have to have some power left. It’ll be enough to blow my brains out_. And when Tony does nothing but stare, Steve’ll snap, _you kill for your own selfish reasons without a thought but when a buddy asks you to do a favour you don’t? You only want to avenge for yourself. Stop being so fucking selfish for once and do it!_

Instead he wishes that it were possibly to disappear in Bucky’s eyes. Just dip his toes in. Suffer through the winter water to his waist. And then just dive. Lost forever and ever without a sense of time. This time it won’t feel like it’s just a day. He’ll be dreaming for eternity. In the files it states that the Winter Soldier dreamt in the freezer, asking about small blond boys with bloody noses and little brunettes with matching church dresses. Steve didn’t in the ice. Now he knows that all he needs is a different sort of chill. In that moment he already thinks less of the idea. All he’ll have are nightmares.

He puts the metal arm across Bucky’s torso and folds Bucky’s only arm over it. He eases Bucky into a sitting position. He scoops an arm under Bucky’s knees and another under the groove of Bucky’s back. The metal fingers nudges underneath Bucky’s chin. Bucky’s eyes droop, turning his eyes into slits.

Bucky’s weight is comforting in Steve’s arms. He’s breathless. His heart’s no longer spreading blood to the tips of his 5 fingers or his toes. His cheeks are sunken, already draining. Steve didn’t get to say bye. All he did was tell him to _go_ , but not this far. He wonders what Bucky's last words were.

“You forgot the shield.”

Steve pauses at the half collapsed doorway. There’s something wet on his cheek, but he can’t wipe it off. So he doesn’t turn around. “I didn’t.”

“Take it.”

“No.”

“Take the fucking shield!” Tony yells. Iron clangs together, like he’s trying to get up.

With his best friend in his arms, Steve flees from the winter. They both flee from the winter.

 

 

 

 

T’Challa provides them a house in the Wakandian Ranges. Clint manages to attract actual crawling, majestic black panthers on the first night with home made pizza arrows and ends up leaving food out for the predators, missing Lucky. Wanda reads classic literature, works on a gorgeous little garden and extends the house with bursts of red, strengthening her powers. Scott makes a friend out of a fire ant, but Clint smacks the creature with a proffesional, bulky coffee machine, which leaves everyone with no coffee and Scott sulking for a week. Sam sits with an unimpressed scowl directed at everyone but Steve and Wanda, and makes snarky comments, which makes Steve’s lips quirk. 

Steve resurrects.

At the top of one of the smaller hills, though under soil, T’Challa believes that Bucky Barnes runs in warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> Fact: working title was "TONY KILLS BUCKY". In capitals.
> 
> come hit me up at foulrescent.tumblr.com . I have no feelings but I'm nice.
> 
> THANKS FOR READING


End file.
